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Comment by bovermyer | Hacker News Reader

> Ige, in his speech, deplored the fact that employees of the emergency management agency were getting death threats since the events of Saturday.

Sounds like they need to prosecute some people for terroristic threats to the fullest extent of the law.

I understand being pissed off about the false alarm, but sending death threats should be an automatic jail sentence at minimum.

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The state sent out a death threat! People are just letting the government know how they feel.

The design of this system is grossly negligent, which IS a management problem. It does look like a web page. How is the page served? An internal secure setup on a private network? Is the browser ever updated? Is there javascript? The number of failure modes on this type of setup is unconstrained. How are updates tested? It appears to me that somebody just put something together without any design or validation process at all. This is fine in many settings, but not for critical public safety infrastructure.

A warning, whether mistaken or not, is not a death threat, and a death threat is not just a complaint.

>A warning, whether mistaken or not, is not a death threat, and a death threat is not just a complaint.

I don't think there is exactly the same crime in all the states of the US, but there is in some states (as well as in many other countries) the crime of "false public alarm".

Example, you start crying "Fire!" in a crowded cinema or public place:

http://mollolawfirm.com/resources/criminal-law-resources/fal...

P.S.: Meantime in Japan:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/asia_pacific/first-hawa...

but this was not the governemnet, it was the NHK and they were very fast to send a correct message.

There's a difference between crying "Fire!" to willingly cause panic over nothing (ie: intent to cause harm), and a mistake...

Text from your first link even says that:

> A person is guilty of a crime of the third degree if he knowingly causes such false alarm [...]

>There's a difference between crying "Fire!" to willingly cause panic over nothing (ie: intent to cause harm), and a mistake...

Sure there is a difference, but - again not all states/countries Laws are the same - it may depend on who has to prove that it was a mistake.

And of course it may be classified as an actual crime or as a minor civil infraction.

Somehow we've landed in a world where death threats, swatting, etc don't generally have any real consequences, and that makes me very sad.

Why do you see that as terrorism?

Because that's literally the law:

> TERRORISTIC THREAT > > (a) A person commits an offense if he threatens to commit any offense involving violence to any person or property with intent to: > > 2. place any person in fear of imminent serious bodily injury;

The operator did not threaten to commit violence.

The OP was referring to the people threatening the operators for the mistake.

That's a fucked up law. If some guys in a bar start arguing about a spilled drink and one says "I'm gonna punch you!", that shouldn't be considered terrorism!

Terrorism used to mean violence or a real threat of violence committed for political reasons. Now it just means any crime committed by someone whose motives (or whose ethnic group) the speaker disapproves of.

it's not "terrorism" it's a "terroristic threat" - same root, but different words and very different meaning as commonly used. no one is equating a drunken bar confrontation and suicide bombing, except you.

He didn't equate them though, that was his whole point.

he says he thinks the words mean the same thing to the authorities -- which they do not; that would be crazy.

The intent of most death threats these days, almost certainly including these, is simply to express dissatisfaction, not to "place any person in fear of imminent serious bodily injury", even if that's how an outside observer unfamiliar with cultural context might interpret it.

That is ridiculous. While it may be done out of dissatisfaction, it is most definitely made for the purpose of "placing the person in fear of imminent serious bodily injury."

It is ridiculous because it is an accurate statement about modern internet culture, which is ridiculous.

> The intent of most death threats ... is simply to express dissatisfaction

Are they? There are plenty of other ways to do that without (pardon me) going nuclear. Many death threats go so far as to include someone's family, friends, and other acquaintances. If it's mere dissatisfaction being expressed, why go that far if not to put someone in fear?

For the same reason different populations might complain by calling the customer support hotline on the back of the box or by submitting a pull request. That's how this group has learned is "the way" to do this.

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